Flames have consumed more than 170,000 acres of land, killed at least 23 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. Napa and Sonoma counties — the heart of California wine country— are especially hard-hit.

Officials have yet to determine the origin of the Santa Rosa wildfires, but dry and powerful " Diablo winds" that blow in overnight may have stoked and spread the infernos.

On Wednesday night, DigitalGlobe — a satellite-imaging company that captures 100 terabytes' worth of new photos of Earth each day — released some of the first close-up views of the disaster from orbit.

"Although there is a lot of smoke in the area, shortwave infrared (SWIR) can penetrate the smoke and detect heat beneath," DigitalGlobe wrote on its website.

The company took the following images on Tuesday and Wednesday with its WorldView-3 and GeoEye-1 satellites.

"Some of these are natural color, while others are shown in the Very Near Infrared (VNIR), where burned areas appear gray and black and healthy vegetation is red," DigitalGlobe told Business Insider in an emailed statement.

Melia Robinson contributed reporting to this post.

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This image, taken by WorldView-3 on Tuesday, shows the Santa Rosa area of Northern California burning.